Asserting the privilege requires the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to certify legally the potential harm to national security.
The problem he faces is that asserting the privilege could be considered by the administrative law judge handling the case as evidence that can help establish the failure-to-supervise charges.
Lytton Strachey, the elongated and stork-like object of obsession for Gertler's lover Dora Carrington, was prepared to buy paintings for which he did not care: as a way of asserting the privilege of being able to do it.
To suggest that asserting the privilege constitutes an admission of criminality is to totally ignore the history of the privilege and the rulings of the Supreme Court.
Whether to assert the privilege is a difficult choice because of the potential for losing one's position in the government for not being cooperative in an investigation.
The court explained that allowing a company to assert the privilege against self-incrimination "would have a detrimental impact on the government's efforts to prosecute white-collar crime, one of the most serious problems confronting law enforcement authorities".
Since then, however, the Obama administration has aggressively asserted the privilege in litigation involving such issues as the C.I.A.'s use of extraordinary rendition and the National Security Agency's practice of wiretapping American citizens.
For investigators, a potential witness who asserts the privilege often makes that person a focus of the investigation, on the theory that "where there is smoke, there is fire".
We will not assert the privilege in court without first following a formal process, including review by a justice department committee and the personal approval of the attorney general.
In trials, grand jury proceedings and most Congressional hearings, witnesses are typically made to assert the privilege but once, if they are forced to appear at all, Mr. Weingarten noted.
